A provincial court judge has levied a 14-month jail term against a man who ran an extensive marijuana grow operation near Hixon.
Phuc Van Vo pleaded guilty to the charge has no criminal record and no firearms were involved.
But Judge Darrell O'Byrne dismissed any consideration of a conditional sentence saying deterring others from committing the same crime is "most important" given the number of operations that have been started up in the region, often by people out of the Lower Mainland.
"You play the game, you pay the price," O'Byrne told Vo, according to a reasons for judgment.
O'Byrne relented somewhat in the face of arguments from Vo's lawyer as Crown was seeking an 18-month jail term.
Vo was arrested in early March when police uncovered the operation on a rural property near the small community 63 kilometres south of Prince George. In a large outbuilding, they found 1,264 plants in various stages of growth with a value of between $474,000 and $1 million.
O'Byrne referred to the number of such grow-ops that police have uncovered in the Central Interior. As the former administrative judge for the Cariboo-Northeast District, O'Byrne said he scheduled proceedings for 17 cases allegedly involving grow ops and is aware of the "tremendous amount of court resources" they have taken up.
"Unless we stop people from coming up to the Cariboo Chilcotin and north, they are going to keep coming, and in that view, jail is the only way to do it," O'Byrne said.
O'Byrne granted a stay of proceedings against another man arrested at the scene. Both Vo and the other man are Vietnamese but live in the Lower Mainland.
Vo was sentenced in Quesnel provincial court on Nov. 8 and the reasons for judgment was made public on Thursday.
